Various types of vacuum cleaners and particularly the so-called canister type of vacuum cleaner normally employs a flexible hose. One end of the hose is attached to the vacuum cleaner while the other end is attached to a suitable attachment or accessory, such as a wand, cleaning head, brush, etc. Although any type of hose may be used one type which has been widely used is in essence a corrugated plastic tube. Such as hose can be fabricated by any desired process. However, it has been found a continuous blow mold process is particularly well suited.
This form of blow molding is an economical process capable of continuously producing a high quality hose in endless lengths at reasonable prices. After the hose has been molded and allowed to cool, it is cut at preselected intervals to provide individual hose sections of fixed length.
It is desirable for each end of each section of hose to have a suitable end fitting adapted to be attached to the vacuum cleaner and/or to the various attachments and accessories.
At one time it was customary to cement or bond a suitable fitting into each end of the hose. However, this is a time consuming and very expensive operation. In addition, since the fitting was permanently bonded onto the hose section, it is permanently locked into a fixed position and could not be rotated or swiveled. This is turn frequently caused the hose to kink or become tangled during use.
More recently it has been proposed to provide an end fitting such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,949, entitled "Hose Construction". This type of end fitting is forced inside of the hose and traps several of the corrugations in the hose so as to maintain them axially compressed. In order to insert this type of end fitting into the end of the hose, the hose must be pliable; i.e., it must still be hot. It is highly likely that the operator will be badly burned when manipulating the end fitting and the hot hose. Moreover, the force that is required to force the fitting into the hose is approximately equal to the force required to pull the fitting from the hose. As a consequence, the end fitting cannot be conveniently installed and/or the fitting will pull out too easily. In addition, when the hose sections are cut from the continuous hose the ends of the sections are generally somewhat ragged and irregular. With this type of fitting these ragged ends remain exposed.